


Take Me to Church

by MusicalChick13



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sexual Content, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 07:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalChick13/pseuds/MusicalChick13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A, hopefully, much more palatable version of THAT scene in 4x03. You know the one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me to Church

**Author's Note:**

> I debated for a long time whether or not to actually post this.
> 
> ...Which is why it's being posted roughly a year after this episode actually happened.
> 
> I trust I don't need to explain why I wrote this in the first place.

 Jaime Lannister stood in the Sept, completely engrossed in the act of watching his sister grieve silently over her-

 

 _Their_ -son.

 

One of the guards tapped him on the shoulder, breaking his concentration. “You should probably let the Queen grieve in peace.” The man spoke with a gruff voice and carried himself very stiffly. He seemed quite uncomfortable. (Funny how, even as a member of the guard, you never got completely used to death and all of the various things that go along with it.)

 

 _And just leave her there? Not on his life_.

 

Jaime shot him a withering look, and the guard quickly backed down with only a simple, wary flick of his eyes toward Cersei, as if to say, “Well, it’s your funeral.”

 

Once everyone had left, Jaime sat awkwardly down next to his sister. Given her behavior toward him as of late, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do. He wasn’t completely sure she wouldn’t order him seized and taken to the dungeons for trying to stay.

 

_The things I do for love…_

 

Luckily (or perhaps not), Cersei didn’t even seem to register that he was there. She just buried her face in her hands and folded over in a bout of rather ugly crying.

 

…Even when she was an absolute wreck, she was still the most beautiful creature Jaime had ever seen.

 

He just sat there, but, as he had never exactly been…close…to his son (it still seemed strange to think of Joffrey as such), he could not come up with something to say. And Cersei, trapped in her own little world of personal emotional grief, well…it was pointless to try to do anything at all to comfort her when she was like this.

 

She didn’t allow herself this kind of vulnerability around other people very often and Jaime felt rather smug that he had been given the rare privilege of seeing her so open and fragile.

 

After what felt like an eternity, Cersei, her eyes now completely devoid of tears, sadness shed to give way for some unfathomable, expressionless, dead emotion, asked, “How?” without taking her eyes off of the body of her dead son.

 

“What?”

 

“How could this happen? He was our son!! Our little boy…” Her eyes closed and she drifted off to an emotional place so dark even Jaime didn’t dare follow.

 

 _She always did have the uncanny ability to only bestow her sympathy on those who didn’t deserve it_. _He could probably count the number of people who **didn’t** want to kill Joffrey on one hand_.

 

…Preferably his left one.

But the reticence of his otherwise passionately talkative paramour was starting to unnerve him. He had to say _something_

 

“I…” Jaime had always been bad at this. He supposed years and years of purposely distancing yourself from your child to prove to the world that he wasn’t yours would dampen the innate biological connection that was supposed to exist between father and son, especially when the son in question had been Joffrey.

“He had a lot of enemies,” Jaime finished at last, unable to say anything else without running the risk of making her even more distraught.

 

Cersei finally looked up at him. “It was Tyrion.”

 

“What?!”

 

“He told me. He told me that, someday, he would do something like this to me, something that would take away my happiness and make it so I never got it back. He said that one day, I’d think I was safe and happy and that my joy would turn to ashes in my mouth.” By now, her voice was a whisper. “He knew how much I love my children.”

 

“He wouldn’t do that.”

 

“Are you sure?” Her gaze was now fixed back on the corpse in front of them.

 

“You’re being ridiculous!”

“YOU SAW HIM!! You saw him look at Joffrey just before he died.” Her eyes were closed and she looked like she was either about to cry or go off and kill someone. Maybe both.

 

“I don’t know what I saw.”

 

“You’re not gaining anything by defending him.”

 

“I don’t need to defend him. Tyrion may not harbor very much love for you, but he would never go so far as to _kill our son_.”

 

At the word “our,” Cersei snapped her gaze back to him, looking as shocked as Jaime felt for finally admitting it out loud.

 

Speaking with a steely voice that did not carry one hint of the strange vulnerability screaming out from every other part of her, she said, “Kill him. Kill Tyrion.”

 

It was not a request. It wasn’t even a command that a parent might give a child or a sibling another sibling, or a husband a wife. It was a command from a queen to her subject.

 

Jaime took a deep breath. There was absolutely no reasoning with her when she made up her mind.

 

“No, Cersei.”

 

“ _He was our **son**. _ Our baby _…”_

“Yes, I’m aware of that. I was there.” _Oh, if looks could kill_. “And I’d hardly call Joffrey a ‘baby.’ ”

Much to his surprise, her face softened with an unspoken reply of, “He always will be to me.”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.”

 

Now she was back to the death glare. “I know that.”

 

“Just making sure.”

 

“Why would I blame myself for the despicable actions of someone else?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“No, obviously not.” She turned away from him completely, facing the opposite wall.

 

Another extremely tense silence.

 

_Out of all of the women in the Seven Kingdoms, why did the woman he loved have to be **this**?_

 

“Tyrion didn’t-”

 

“Just stop talking, Jaime.”

 

He did.

 

_Funny how she seemed to be the only one who could make him do that, even now._

 

As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he could see how she might be able to come to the conclusion that Tyrion had murdered her son. But if she would just move past her unwarranted hatred of her younger brother for a few seconds, she’d recognize that he would never be capable of doing that. Not even to her. And that one look didn’t necessarily mean anything. And that Joffrey couldn’t possibly know who murdered him. If he had really suspected Tyrion beforehand (which was really the only way her accusation could make logical sense) based on some sort of earlier threat or overheard scheme, he would have taken precautions to punish him. Or at least keep him away from the wedding.

 

…But there was never anyone, not even the father of her children, who could get through to Cersei.

 

…Which, sad as the fact may be, was one of the reasons why Jaime loved her.

 

“Joffrey’s killer will be found.”

 

“He _has_ been found! He needs to be brought to justice!!”

 

“You’ll have to find someone else to do it, then, because I’m not going to. I won’t kill Tyrion.”

 

 _Not even for you_.

 

And, suddenly, Cersei starts crying again.

 

_In the name of all the gods who ever existed, what was he supposed to do **now**?_

 

He settles for awkwardly patting her shoulder. Cersei was a woman who never took anyone’s word unless they did a damn good job of backing it up with actions, so, if she wouldn’t respond to reason, maybe she’d respond to physical solace.

 

Against what he assumes is Cersei’s better judgment, she leans toward him ever-so-slightly.

 

 _Finally he was getting somewhere_.

 

The patting gradually turns into the drawing of smooth, (what he assumes are) soothing circles on her back.

 

“I-I-” Cersei begins, but another bout of crying interrupts her and she seems to forget the previous tension between them and buries her face in his shoulder.

 

At some point, she starts kissing him, and, location-be-damned, he’d sooner lose his other hand than break away from this sudden display of affection. It’s messy and sloppy and out of control and everything that a kiss between two lovers ought not to be, but it doesn’t bring him any less of a rush than any other instance of physical contact with Cersei does.

 

She grabs on to his shirt as if holding on for dear life and his arm reaches around to start undoing her dress.

 

Some small part of him registers that maybe having sex with your sister in front of the fresh corpse of your murdered son on the floor of a sacred place where other people could very easily walk in _might_ not be the best idea, but as Cersei’s hand moves up to his cheek with a surprising degree of tenderness, he finds it very easy to push to the back of his mind.

 

In fact, he feels something darkly exciting ignite inside of him at the prospect of breaking about fifty rules at once. Of sharing such a strange, illicit experience with the only woman he’s ever wanted.

 

 _Oh, he **had** missed this_.

 

He’s almost gotten her dress to the point where he can slide it off her body when she yanks herself away, almost out of reach.

 

She looks at him, every conceivable emotion flickering all at once through those eyes that had so often been the focus of his dreams and happier memories, and merely shakes her head.

 

Now he was just angry. Now she was just purposely provoking him. Was she merely trying to seduce him into killing who she supposed was her son’s murderer? What in the name of the Seven Kingdoms did she think she was trying to do?!

 

“You’re a hateful woman.” No response, just a cool, evenly-met stare.

 

“Why have the gods made me love a HATEFUL WOMAN??!” He merely means to gently push her father away from him, but he never _did_ truly develop the ability to accurately gauge his strength. When she keels over and ends up on the floor, he’s too angry at her to muster up any sympathy.

 

She delicately wipes a fresh tear off her cheek that she thinks he can’t see.

 

 _Maybe a little sympathy_.

 

“What are-”

 

She scrambles up quickly back to a sitting position. “Not now. Not here.”

 

He looks at her questioningly.

 

“It’s not right.”

 

He almost laughs at the ridiculousness of Cersei lecturing him about morals.

 

Cersei can tell she’s not getting through and opts for, “The septons will be here soon. And gods know who else.”

 

“I don’t care.”

 

She looks at him questioningly.

 

“I fought and murdered and went through the most _painful experience of my life_ so I could come back _here_. A handful of septons don’t scare me.”

 

Her expression doesn’t change.

 

He sighs exasperatedly. Her refusal to acknowledge his arguments was really starting to get on his nerves. If she didn’t say something soon, he was probably going to end up breaking something.

 

Which is probably why he unintentionally declares, “If the thing in question is anything that gets in the way of _you_ , then I don’t care.”

 

Cersei’s eyes widen to almost comical proportions and the rest of her body just freezes.

 

_Old and new gods, did he **really** just say that out loud? Was he **trying** to make himself look more desperate than she obviously already thought he was? For the love of all that was good in the world, what was he doing?_

He moves to reach his arm around her shoulder, but she stands up and walks to the other end of the room.

 

She paces back and forth a bit before turning and looking at him, an unreadable expression washing over her face.

 

Then she rolls her eyes and resumes her pacing, each step meticulously measured and falling into a perfectly straight line.

 

Finally, with her back turned, so quietly Jaime almost can’t hear her, Cersei says, “I suppose they still won’t be back for a little while.”

 

“What?”

 

“The septons. _Do_ pay attention.” She still doesn’t move. He rolls his eyes.

 

 _Oh, yes, he was **definitely** about to break something_.

 

With no preamble, she begins walking toward him, he starts retreating out of confusion and anger and a whole mix of emotions, and, somewhere during this exchange, she manages to grab onto his left wrist with both of her hands.

 

“Let me go,” he growls.

 

“Never,” she leans in and whispers in his ear. It makes him shiver all the way down to the deepest, darkest corner of what’s left of his soul, and she knows it.

 

“I still don’t understand.”

 

She turns him around, places a hand gingerly on his chest, and meets his eyes. All she says is “You.”

 

He’s not entirely sure exactly what she means by this, but he’ll take it.

 

And then he moves his right hand up to her face. Cersei bristles at the touch of the cool metal, turns around, and runs away through the Sept entrance.

 

 _Of course not_. _Because why would anything ever be easy_.

 

Soon after, the septons, do, in fact, come in. And, upon realizing how close they’d come to behavior that could only have ended in outright, full-on compromising disaster, Jaime realizes that maybe he _does_ care a little bit.

 

 _And of course Cersei would be right_.

 

One of them asks where the Queen has gone and Jaime merely shrugs his shoulders before walking back outside.

 

He tries to think about something other than Cersei, but it doesn’t work. It’s never worked.

 

The only thought he manages is a sardonic, _Well, **this** will be a hell of a story to tell the grandchildren._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is a reference to the song.


End file.
